Use of land administrative data is key to understanding the outcomes from land tenure and governance interventions. However, gaining access to land administrative data, especially amid new data privacy concerns, has proved to be a complex process. It is important during the compact development process to gain agreements on data access and related publication of anonymized data. Administrative data can provide trends in all land transactions over time rather than a stagnant point in time for a small sample of parcels. For example, administrative data can be used to analyze tenure status, share of land titled in the name of women or jointly held, demand for and approvals of formal land transactions, land transaction times and volume of mortgages and loans that use land/property as collateral. In its land evaluations, MCC has moved towards collection of land administrative data as a way of tracking project impacts on land markets and land transaction times.
In the Registry System and Process Survey evaluation, the administrative data was used to understand land transaction times and changes in the land market. The Special Hashaa Plot Survey evaluation also used land administrative data to verify land tenure status reported in household surveys, as well as to understand trends in the demand for land registration. However, it takes significant time to review the multiple paper and digital record keeping systems across offices to understand the variables available, the details behind what data is captured, and the data’s accuracy. In addition, obtaining access to land administrative data has proven complex as governments, including Mongolia, increasingly incorporate protections for data privacy. A new data privacy law in Mongolia went into effect post compact. Gaining access to the data hence required a series of meetings and official letters with the Ministry of Justice, where the General Authority of State Registration sits, to access the registry data and then additional approvals were necessary to publish the anonymized data sets. Similar issues have been faced by evaluators across MCC land projects, including Cabo Verde and Mozambique.
Although land administrative data is often provided as part of the MCC monitoring framework reporting, MCC should engage governments early on to understand the flow of key land transactions through the system, what data is available and in what form, and ensure data sharing arrangements are established with MCC’s independent evaluators. This would apply to all sectors which are using administrative datasets. Similar pre-arranged agreements on publishing the anonymized administrative datasets could also be helpful as more evaluations increasingly use non-household datasets.